Modern socialism

v^lOSANCEtfjv
^? - •$

% ^lOS-ANGElfj^

«5

MODERN SOCIALISM.

BY

Annie Besant.

LONDON:

FRKETHOUGHT PUBLISHING COMPANY,

63, FLEET STREET, E.G.

1886.

PRICE SIXPENCE.

MODERN SOCIALISM.

BY

ANNIE BESANT.

LONDON
FKEETHOUGHT PUBLISHING COMPANY,

63, FLEET STREET, E.G.
1886.

LONDON

FEINTED BY ANNIE BESANT AND CHAELES BEADLAT7GH,
C3, FLEET STEEET, E.C.

MODERN SOCIALISM.

GREAT changes are long in the preparing, and every
thought that meets ultimately with wide acceptance is
lying inarticulate in many minds ere it is syllabled out by
some articulate one, and stands forth a spoken Word. The
Zeitgeist has its mouth in those of its children who have
brain to understand, voice to proclaim, courage to stand
alone. Some new Truth then peals out, sonorous and far-
sounding as the roll of the thunder, melodious to the ears
attuned to the deep grand harmonies of Nature, but terrible
to those accustomed only to the subdued lispings of artificial
triflers, and the murmurs which float amid the hangings of
courtly halls.

When such an event occurs a few hearken, study, and
then rejoicingly accept the new Truth ; these are its
pioneers, its apostles, who go out to proclaim it to the as
yet unbelieving world. They meet with ridicule, then with
persecution; for ever the new Truth undermines some
hoary Lie, which has its band of devoted adherents living
on the spoils of its reign. Slowly, against custom and
tradition, against selfishness and violence, even against
indifference, deadliest foe of all, this band of devoted
teachers makes its onward way. And the band grows and
grows, and each convert becomes in his turn a pioneer;
until at last the victory is won, and the minority has
become the majority ; and then the time comes for some
new Truth once more, and the old struggle is gone over
afresh, and so again and again ; and thus the race makes
progress, and humanity climbs ever upward towards the
perfect life.

During the last century and a quarter the social problem
has been pressing for solution on all who have brains to

4 MODERX SOCIALISM.

think and hearts to feel. The coexistence of wealth and
penury, of idle prodigality and laborious stint ; the terrible
fact that " progress and poverty " seem to march hand-in-
hand ; the growing slums in large towns ; the huge for-
tunes and the starving poor; these things make content
impossible, and force into prominence the question: "Must
this state of things continue ? Is there no possible change
which will cure, not only palliate, the present evils ?

Great hopes have sprung into being from time to time,
each in turn to be blighted. Machinery was to double
production and diminish toil, to spread comfort and suffi-
ciency everywhere. It made cotton-lords and merchant-
princes with one hand, and with the other created a prole-
tariat unlike aught the world had seen, poor in the midst
of the wealth it created, miserable in the midst of luxury,
ignorant in the midst of knowledge, savage in the midst
of civilisation. When the repeal of the Corn Laws was
striven for and accomplished, once more hope rose high.
Cheap food was to put an end to starvation. Alas ! in
the streets of the wealthiest city in Christendom, men and
women perish for lack of a loaf of bread.

Nor is this persistence of misery and of squalor the only
sign which troubles the brain and the heart of the student
of the social problem. He notes the recurring crises in
industry, the inflations and depressions of trade. At one
time all is prosperous ; demand is brisk, and supply can
scarce keep pace with it ; wages rise, full time is worked,
production is enormously increased. Then a change creeps-
over all ; supply has overtaken, has surpassed demand ;
the market is glutted ; the warehouses are filled with
unsaleable goods ; short time begins ; wages fall ; mills are
closed ; furnaces are damped out ; many workers are dis-
charged. Then the unemployed in the large towns increase
in number ; the poor-rate rises ; distress spreads upwards.
After a while the depression passes ; trade improves ; and
the whole weary circle is trodden once more. Nor is this
all ; although there has been " over-production " there is
want of the necessaries of life; there are unsaleable clothing
goods in the warehouses, and half-naked people shivering
outside ; too many blankets, and children crying them-
selves to sleep for cold. This monstrous absurdity, of com-
modities a drug in the market, and human beings perishing
for want of those very commodities, stares us ever in the

MODERN SOCIALISM. 6

face. Cannot human brain discover some means to put an
end to this state of things, a state which would be ludicrous
were it not for the horrible suffering involved in it '? Some
say, this must always be so ; that the poor shall be for
ever with us ; that commercial crises are inevitable ; that
these evils are not susceptible of complete cure. If this
indeed be true, then I know not that any better advice can
be given to humanity than that given to Job by his wife,
to " curse God and die ". But I think not so meanly of
human intelligence ; I believe not that our present indus-
trial system, little more than a century old, must needs be
eternal ; I believe that the present system, devised by man
and founded in greed of gain, may by man be changed ;
and that man's growing power over external nature may
be used to bring comfort and wealth to each, and not, as
now, to enrich the few at the cost of the enslavement of
the many.

Various attempts to bring about a better social state
have been made by earnest and noble-hearted men during
the last hundred years. I leave aside such systems as
those of the Moravians, because they cannot be regarded
as in any sense schemes for the reconstruction of society.
They, like the monastic communities, were merely attempts
to create oases, fenced in from the world's evils, where
men might prepare for a future life. The efforts I allude
to are those classed as "Socialistic"; they were really
crude forms of Communism. With these the name of
Robert Owen will be for ever associated.

Owen's first experiment was made at New Lanark, in
connexion with the cotton-mills established there by Mr.
Dale, his father-in-law. He became the manager of these
in 1797, and set himself to work to improve the condition
of the operatives and their families. The success which
attended his efforts, the changes wrought by education
and by fair dealings, encouraged him to plan out a wider
scheme of social amelioration. In 1817 he was asked to
report on the causes of poverty to the Committee on the
Poor Laws, and in this report he dwelt on the serious in-
crease of pauperism which had followed the introduction
of machinery, and urged that employment ought to be
found for those who were in need of it. He " recommended
that every union or county should provide a farm for the
employment of their poor; when circumstances admitted

6 MODERN SOCIALISM.

of it, there should be a manufactory in connexion with it "
("Kobert Owen," by A. J. Booth, p. 70). On the farm,
buildings were to be built for housing the laborers, con-
sisting of "a square, divided into two parallelograms by
the erection of public buildings in the centre " ; these would
consist of "a kitchen, mess-room, school-rooms, library
and lecture-hall. The poor would enjoy every advantage
that economy could suggest: the same roof would cover
many dwellings : the same stove might warm every room :
the food would be cooked at the same time, and on the
same fire : the meals would be eaten from the same table,
in the society of friends and fellow- workers. Sympathies
now restricted to the family would be thus extended to-
a community : the union would be still further cemented
by an equal participation in the profits, an equal share in

the toil Competition is the cause of many vices ;

association will be their corrective" (Ibid, pp. 70-72).
Soon after this report, Mr. Owen published a letter, urging
the reconstitution of "the whole of society on a similar
basis"; the lowest class was to consist of paupers, to be
drafted into the proposed establishments ; the second of
the "working-class"; the third of laborers, artisans, and
tradesmen, with property of from £100 to £2,000; the-
fourth of persons unable or unwilling to work, owning
from £1,000 to £20,000 ; these were to employ the second
class. The workman was to be supported by this class in
comfort for seven years in exchange for his labor, and then
was to be presented by it with £100, so that he might
enter class three ; if he remained as a worker for five years
more he was to have £200.

A community of workers, as recommended by Owen, was
started in 1825, under the management of Abraham
Combe, at Orbiston, nine miles east of Glasgow, and it
began well; but Combe died in 1827, and with his death
the whole thing went to pieces. A few months before the
settlement at Orbiston, Eobert Owen sailed for America,
and he purchased a property named Harmony, consisting
of 30,000 acres in Indiana, from the Eappites, a religious
communistic body. He advertised for inhabitants, and
gathered together a mixed crowd; "there were some
enthusiasts who had come, at great personal sacrifice, to
face a rude life and to mix among rude men, who had no
object but to work out the great problem of a New Society ;.

MODERN" SOCIALISM. 7

there were others who fancied they could secure abundance
with little labor, prepared to shirk their share in the toil,
but not to forego their share in the reward " (Ibid, p. 106).
In the following year, 1826, "New Harmony " inaugurated
a system of complete Communism, much against Owen's
judgment ; a number of small independent communities
were soon formed, eight of these having already broken
off from New Harmony early in 1827, the difficulties
attendant on widely extended common life being found
insuperable. In 1828, Eobert Owen was forced to confess
that his efforts had failed, and that ' ' families trained in
the individual system " could not suddenly be plunged into
piire Communism with success. It boots not to dwell here
on his further efforts in England. Eobert Owen's experi-
ments failed, but out of his teaching arose the co-operative
movement, and the impulse to seek some rational system
of society has, since his time, never quite died out in
England.

In America a large number of communities have been
established, mostly religious in character. Erom the
careful account given of them by Charles Nordhoff, the
following brief details are taken (all numbers relate to
1874). The Amana community consists of 1,450 members;
they have a property of 25,000 acres, and live in seven
small towns; they are Germans, very pious and very
prosperous ; their head is a woman, who is directly inspired
by God. The Harmony Society, Economy, near Pittsburg,
consists of followers of Eapp, who founded the society in
1805. They are all Germans and number 110, in addition
to about 100 hired laborers and some sixty children. They
live in comfort, and have clearly done well unto them-
unto themselves, owning now a very large amount of pro-
perty. The Separatists of Zoar, Ohio, are, once more,
Germans: they started in 1817, have now about 300
members, own 7,000 acres of land, and are prosperous
exceedingly. The Shakers, established in 1792, are scat-
tered over several States, number about 2,415, own about
100.000 acres of land, are divided into fifty-eight commu-
nities, and are wealthy and prosperous ; the members are
American and English. The Perfectionists of Oneida and
Wallingford are American, and the first attempt by them
at communal living took place in 1846. They number 521,
and own 894 acres of land. They also are prosperous.

8 MODERN SOCIALISM.

The Aurora and Bethel Communes, in Oregon, are German,
or " Pennsylvania Dutch "; they started in 1844, and now
number some GOO persons : their property extends to
23,000 acres, and they live in much comfort. The Icarians,
founded by Etienne Cabet in 1848, are nearly all French;
they have hitherto been less fortunate than the preceding
societies, in consequence of mismanagement at the start ;
a heavy debt was incurred early in the movement, and
members fell off ; but a few resolute men and women
settled down steadily in Iowa, with 4,000 acres of land,
and 20,000 dollars of debt; they had to give up the land
to their creditors, but managed to redeem nearly half of it,
and they are now 65 in number, own 1,936 acres,
have no debts, and have acquired a large live stock. They
still live very plainly, but are on their way to prosperity,
having conquered all the difficulties amid which they
started ; their constitution is perfectly democratic and they
are without religion. A Swedish community at Bishop
Hill, Illinois, was formed by a pietist sect which emi-
grated to America to escape persecution in 1846-1848.
They were terribly poor at first and lived in holes in the
ground, with a tent for a church, but gradually acquired
property; until in 1859 they owned 10,000 acres of land,
worth 300,000 dollars, and some magnificent live stock.
Unfortunately their piety led to such extreme dullness that
the younger members of the society revolted: debt was
incurred, individuality was advocated, the property was
divided, and the community ceased to exist. Lastly, there
are two small communities, founded in 1871 and 1874 ; the
former, the Progressive Community, at Cedar Vale, consists
partly of Eussians ; it possesses 320 acres of good land,
and has only eight members, of whom one is a child. The
second, the Social Freedom Community, consists of three
adults and three lads, Americans, and has a farm of 333
acres.

The whole of these societies can only be regarded as in
the nature of experiments, and as such they are extremely
interesting; each community has succeeded in gaining
comfort and independence, but these small bodies, living
chiefly by agriculture in a thinly-populated country on
virgin soil, while they show the advantages of associated
labor, really offer no data for the solution of the problems
which beset a complex society. They are a return to more

SOCIALISM.

9

primitive forms of living, not an onward social evolution,
and they are only possible in a " new country ". Further,
while they are communistic so far as their own members
are concerned, they are individualistic and competitive in
their aspect to the outer world ; each small group holds its
own property, and transacts all its business on the old lines
in its dealings with the rest of the nation. This is, of
course, inevitable, since each is encircled by competition ;
but it must not be overlooked that all these organisations,
like co-operative societies at home, are nothing more than
enlarged families, and are essentially individualistic ; win-
ning sufficiency for their own narrow, isolated circles, but
leaving untouched the question of national poverty. They
are arks, rescuing their inmates from the deluge, but they
do nothing to drain away the seething ocean of misery.

We turn next to Socialism, as distinct from Communism.
The distinction between these, though recognised by so
orthodox an economist as John Stuart Mill, is generally
ignored by those who oppose any radical reconstruction of
Society. Mr. Mill divides into two classes the assailants
of the present system of purely individualistic property :
"those whose scheme implies absolute equality in the
distribution of the physical means of life and enjoyment,
and those who admit inequality, but grounded on some
principle or supposed principle, of justice or general
expediency, and not, like so many of the existing social
inequalities, dependent on accident alone. At the head of
the first class, as the earliest of those belonging to the
present generation, must be placed Mr. Owen and his fol-
lowers. M. Louis Blanc and M. Cabet have more recently
become conspicuous as apostles of similar doctrines (though
the former advocates equality of distribution only as a
transition to a still higher standard of justice, that all
should work according to their capacity, and receive
according to their wants). The characteristic name for
this economical system is Communism, a word of conti-
nental origin, only of late introduced into this country.
The word Socialism, which originated among the English
Communists, and was assumed by them as a name to
designate their own doctrine, is now, on the Continent,
employed in a larger sense ; not necessarily implying
Communism, or the entire abolition of private property,
but applied to any system which requires that the land and

10 MODERN SOCIALISM.

the instruments of production should be the property, not
of individuals, but of communities or associations, or of
the government" ("Principles of Political Economy",
Book II., chap, i., sec. 2). Communism implies the com-
plete abolition of private property, and the supply of the-
wants of each individual from a common store, without
regard to the contributions to that common store which
may, or may not, have been made by the individual.
Socialism merely implies that the raw material of the soil
and the means of production shall not be the private pro-
perty of individuals, but shall be under the control of the
community ; it leaves intact a man's control over himself
and over the value of his work — subject to such general
laws as are necessary in any community — but by socialising
land and capital it deprives each of the power of enslaving-
his fellows, and of living in idleness on the results of their
labor instead of on the results of his own. It may be that at
some future time humanity shall have evolved to a point
which shall render Communism the only rational system ;
when every man is eager to do his share of work ; anxious
not to make too much for his own enjoyment ; holding the
scales of justice with a perfectly even hand ; his one aim
the general good, and his one effort the service of his-
brethren ; when each individual is thus developed, law will
have become unnecessary, and Communism will be the
natural expression of social life ; perfect freedom will be
the lot of each, because each will have become a law unta
himself. But to that stage of development man has not
yet attained, and for man as he is Communism would mean
the living of the idle on the toil of the laborious, the
rebirth, under a new name, of our present system.

Modern Socialism is an attempt to get at the root of the
poverty which now prevails ; to find out how fortunes are
made ; why commercial crises occur ; what are the real
relations of capital and labor at the present time.

In speaking of "fortunes", I do not here include for-
tunes made by gambling, as on the Stock Exchange. They
fall under another category, for in gambling, whether on
the Stock Exchange or on the card table, wealth is nofr
really made ; it only passes from one pocket to another.
The gambler, or the burglar, may " make a fortune " so
far as he is himself concerned ; but it is not done by the
creation of wealth, but only by transferring wealth already

MODERN SOCIALISM. 11

existing from the pocket of its temporary possessor into
his own ; in both, businesses the profits are large because
the risks are great, and the penalty for failure heavy for
the moment.

Socialism, as an industrial system, is chiefly concerned
with fortunes in the making, with the way in which the
wealth created by associated labor passes into the hands
of individuals who do little or nothing in exchange for it.
These fortunes arise from the ownership of the instruments
of production, or of the raw material out of which wealth is
to be manufactured ; from the ownership, that is, of capital
or of land.

PRODUCTION.

Let us take the case of the possessor of capital employed
in manufacture. This man desires to obtain more wealth
than he can produce alone, more than he can individually
produce even with the help of machinery. He must con-
sequently hire others, who, in exchange for a certain fixed
sum to be paid to them by him, shall allow him to take
over the whole results of their labor, and to pocket the
difference between those results and the fixed sum paid
by him. This fixed sum is known as wage, and is "the
market price of labor". We have therefore here two-
classes face to face with each other : one is a class which
is the owner of capital, that is, which possesses the instru-
ments of production ; the other is a class which possesses
the labor-force, without which the instruments of produc-
tion are useless, but which must perish if it cannot get
hold of some of those instruments. (Behind the capitalists
is a third class, the land-owning, with which the capitalist
has to come to terms ; that will be dealt with afterwards.)
This second class stands therefore at this disadvantage ; that
while the capitalist can, if he pleases, utilise his own labor-
force for his own subsistence, it cannot subsist at all except
with his consent and aid, being shut out from the raw
material by the landowner, and from the instruments of
production by himself. Put a naked man on fertile soil in
a decent climate and he will subsist ; he will live on fruit
and berries while with his hands he fashions some rough
tool, and with the help thereof makes him a better one ;
out of the raw material he will form an instrument of pro-
duction with those original instruments of production given

12 3IODERN SOCIALISM.

him lay nature, his fingers and the muscles of his body ;
then with his instrument and the raw material at his feet
he will labor and win his livelihood. But in our complex
society this opening is not before him ; the raw material
is enclosed and trespassers are prosecuted; if he picks fruit
for food, he is a thief ; if he breaks off a bough to make
a rough tool, he is arrested ; he cannot get an instrument
•of production, and if he could he would have nothing to use
it on; he has nothing but his labor-force, and he must either
sell that to someone who wants it, or he must die. And the
sale must be complete. His labor-force is bought for so
much down per week or per month ; it no longer belongs
to himself, it is owned by his master, and he has not any
right over that which it produces ; he has sold it, and if he
wants to resume possession he must give notice of his wish
to the owner thereof ; having resumed possession it is of no
use to him ; he can only live by selling it to somebody else.
He is "free", in so far that he is able to change his
master ; he is a slave in that he must sell the labor force
in his body for food. The man whose labor-force has been
sold to another for life is regarded by all as a slave ; the
man whose labor-force is sold for stated terms is regarded
by most as free ; yet in comparing the conditions of the two,
it is well to bear in mind that the slave, in becoming a
•chattel, becomes of value to his master, and it is the
interest of the latter to feed him well and to keep up his
physical strength as long as is possible ; also in old age he
is fed and housed, and can die in peace amid his fellows.
"Whereas the wage-earner has no such value, but it is his
master's interest to get as much work out of him as is
possible, without regard for his health, there being plenty
to take his place when he is worn out ; and when he is
old, he is separated from wife and child and is left to die
in the prison we call a workhouse. The slave is valuable,
as the horse and the ox are valuable, to his owner ; the
wage-earner is valuable only as a garment, which is cast
into the dusthole when it is worn out.

It may be answered that the wage-earner by good for-
tune, industry, and thrift, may be able so to save of his
earnings that he may escape the workhouse, and may even
himself become independent and an " employer of labor ".
True. So might a lucky slave become free. But the
truth that some may rise out of their class does not render

MODERN SOCIALISM. 13

satisfactory the state of the class, and the very fact that
such rising is held out as a reward and a stimulus is an
admission that an escape from the proletariat must be the
natural longing of every proletarian. The rising of a few
does not benefit the proletariat as a whole, and it is the
existence of this unpropertied proletariat which is the evil
thing.

To this proletariat, waiting to sell its labor-force, the
capitalist goes, for it is here that he will be able to obtain
the wealth-making strength which he requires. The next
question is: What determines the wage which he is to-
pay ? That is : what fixes the market price of labor-
force ? Putting on one side temporary and comparatively
trivial causes, which may slightly affect it one way or the
other, there are two constant determinants : population,
and standard of living. The market-price of labor-force
will largely depend on the quantity of labor-force in the
market ; if the supply exceed the demand, the price will
be low ; if the demand exceed the supply, the price will
go up. If an employer requires fifty laborers, and two-
hundred laborers compete with each other for the employ-
ment he offers, and if the employment stands between
them and starvation, he will be able to beat down their
price until it touches the lowest point at which they can
subsist. The more rapid the multiplication of the prole-
tariat, the better for the capitalist class.

The other determinant is the "standard of living" or
"standard of comfort". Wage can never sink beyond
the point at which a man and his family can exist thereon;
this is the extreme limit of its fall, inasmuch as a man
will not work unless he can exist on the results of his
work. As a matter of fact, it does not often sink so low ;
the wage of an ordinary operative is more than barely
suffices to keep him and his family alive, but large num-
bers of the laboring poor are habitually underfed, and are
liable to the diseases brought on by low living, as well as
to premature aging and death arising from the same cause.
It is a significant fact that the deathrate of the poor is
much higher than the deathrate of the rich. Wage is
lower in countries in which the standard of living is low,
than in those in which it is, by comparison, higher. Thus
in parts of Scotland, where oatmeal is much used for food,
and children run much barefoot, wage is normally lower

14 MODEKN SOCIALISM.

than in England, where wheaten flour and shoes and
stockings are expected. Any general lowering of the
standard of living is therefore to be deprecated — as the
wide substitution of cheap vegetable food-stuffs for more
expensive articles of diet. The standard of living also
(and chiefly, in any given country) affects wages through
its effect on population. Mill points out (" Principles of
Political Economy," Book II., chap, xi., sec. 2) that
"wages do adapt themselves to the price of food ", either
{a) from children dying prematurely when food rises, and
wages were before barely sufficient to maintain them, or
(b) from voluntary restriction of the growth of population
when the laborers refuse to sink below a certain standard
of living. In each case the diminution of labor supply
causes a rise of wage. "Mr. Blcardo", says Mill, " con- ,
siders these two cases to comprehend all cases. He as-
sumes, that there is everywhere a minimum rate of wages :
either the lowest with which it is physically possible to
keep up the population, or the lowest with which the
people will choose to do so. To this minimum he assumes
that the general rate of wages always tends ; that they
can never be lower, beyond the length of time required for
a diminished rate of increase to make itself felt, and can
never long continue higher." This is the "iron law of
wages ", and it is the recognition of its truth which, among
other reasons, sets Socialists against the wage-system of v
industry. [It must not be forgotten that the phrase
"ordinary operative" does not include all the workers.
There is a large class which obtains barely subsistence
wage, and those who are not regularly employed are on
the very verge of starvation. The hard lot of these must
not be left out of sight in impeaching the present social
state.]

The capitalist, then, buys as much labor-force as he
desires, or as his means allow, at the market price, deter-
mined in the way we have seen. This labor-force he pro-
poses to utilise for his own advantage ; with some of his
capital he buys it ; some of his capital consists in machinery,
and the labor- force set at work on this machinery is to
produce wealth. The labor-force and the instruments of
production are now brought together ; they will now pro-
duce wealth, and both they and the wealth they produce
are the property of the capitalist.

MODERX SOCIALISM. 15

Our next inquiry is : Where does the capitalist look for
lis profit? He has bought machinery; he has bought
labor-force ; whence comes the gain he is seeking ? The
profit of the capitalist must arise from the difference be-
tween the price he pays for labor-force and the wealth
produced by it ; out of this difference must be paid his
rent, the loss incurred by wear-and-tear, and the price of
the raw material on which his machinery works ; these
provided for, the remainder of the difference is his "profit ".
The analysis of the way in which this profit arises is, then,
the task that comes next.

In Karl Marx's "Das Capital" may be found a carefully
elaborated exposition of " surplus- value ". The term is a con-
venient one, and the student will do well to read his 7th chap-
ter, on the "production of use-value and surplus-value";
in- reading, he must remember Marx's definitions of value
and use-value, which of course govern the whole. Value
is human labor incorporated in a commodity ; use- value
is that which in a commodity satisfies some human want.
The " use-value " of Marx is identical with the " intrinsic
natural worth" of Locke. Locke says: "The intrinsic,
natural worth of any thing, consists in its fitness to supply
the necessities, or serve the conveniences of human life "
("Considerations of the Lowering of Interest," etc., Locke's
Works, vol. ii., p. 28, ed. 1777). As an instance of the
production of surplus-value — that is of the difference be-
tween the capital which the capitalist expends in produc-
tion and that which he possesses when the production is
complete— Marx takes the case of the manufacture of ten
pounds of thread. The capitalist buys ten pounds of
cotton at 10s. ; wear-and-tear of machinery in the spinning
of the cotton into thread raises his expenditure to 12s.;
further, six hours of work are necessary to turn the ten
pounds of cotton into ten pounds of thread.

Now suppose that a man in six hours is able to produce
sufficient to maintain himself for a day ; — that is that he
produces as much as might be exchanged for a day's con-
sumption of the necessaries of life. Let us value this at
3s. in money. That 3s. which is the monetary equivalent
of his six hours' labor must be added to the cost of pro-
duction of the thread ; its value has therefore risen finally
to 15s. If the capitalist now sells his ten pounds of thread
for 15s., he will only receive back as much as he has

16 MODEKX SOCIALISM.

expended ; lie will have made no profit. But suppose the
working day be of twelve hours instead of six, the wages
paid will none the less be fixed at 3s. by the standard of
living ; but in that second six hours the operative can
transform another ten pounds of cotton into another ten
pounds of thread ; as before, cotton and wear-and-tear will
amount to 12s. ; but these ten pounds of thread have a
value of 15s. as had the previous ten pounds, although they
have only cost the capitalist 12s. Hence the final product
of the day's labor has a value of 30s., but has cost the
capitalist only 27s. The value added by the operative in
the second six hours has brought him no equivalent ; it is
" surplus- value", value added by him over the value whose
equivalent he receives in wage ; this creation of surplus-
value is the aim of the capitalist.

Now without tying ourselves down to the exact figures
given by Marx, we may yet see by a little thought that his
position as to " surplus- value " is essentially correct. If a
capitalist buys £1 worth of raw material ; if his machinery
is depreciated say by the value of one shilling in working
up the raw material ; if he pays in wage 5s. for the labor-
force expended on it ; he will most certainly not be content
with selling the finished product for 26s. He demands a
"profit" on the transaction, and this profit can only be the
difference between that which is paid to labor, and the
value, in the ordinary sense of the word, which labor
creates.

It is sometimes objected that nothing is gained by
Marx's divisions of "value", " surplus value ", and "ex-
change value", but that, on the contrary, they transport
economics into a metaphysical region away from the solid
ground of facts. It is urged that it is better to represent the
conditions thus : that the worker produces a mass of com-
modities ; that the capitalist sells these commodities for
what they will fetch in the market, the price being fixed,
not by the duration of the labor embodied in them, but by
the relative utilities of money and commodity to buyer and
seller ; that the capitalist gives over to the producer suffi-
cient of the results of the sale to enable the producer to
exist, and pockets the remainder. This presentment is a
statement of the facts as they are; Marx's "value" is
a metaphysical abstraction, corresponding to nothing exist-
ing at the present time, however true it would be under

MODERN SOCIALISM. 17

ideal conditions. The main point to grasp, however, is
•obvious, whichever of these presentments is thought pre-
ferable. Capital, under our present industrial system, is
the result of unpaid labor — a matter to be further con-
sidered later in this essay. But it must be remembered
that, as a matter of fact, the profit made by the capitalist
is not a fixed quantity, as is the " surplus value " of Marx ;
but that the capitalist not only preys on the worker, but
also on the necessities of the consumer, his profit rising
and falling with the changes of demand and supply. The
phrase " surplus value " is, as I have said, a convenient
one, but it might well be extended to cover the whole
difference between the price paid to labor for the com-
modities it produces, and the price obtained for those com-
modities by the capitalist employer of labor. It is in this
wide sense that the phrase is used in the following pages,
not in the metaphysical sense of Marx.

We are now in a position to understand how large for-
tunes are made, and why Capital and Labor are ever at
war.

Before the commencement of the Industrial Period —
which may be fairly dated from the invention of the Spin-
ning Jenny in 1764 — it was not possible to accumulate
great wealth by the employment of hired labor. By hand-
work, or by the use of the very simple machines available
prior to that date, a single operative was not able to pro-
duce sufficient to at once support himself and to largely
enrich others. " Masters and men" consequently formed
a community of workers, without the sharp divisions that
now exist between capitalist and "hands"; and the em-
ployer would have been as much ashamed of not working
deftly at his trade, as the son of a Lancashire cotton-lord
would be if he were suspected of throwing a shuttle in
one of his father's looms. Under these conditions there
was very little surplus-value to be absorbed, and there
were consequently no great aggregations of purely indus-
trial classes. The introduction of machinery multiplied
enormously the productive power of the operative, while it
did not increase the wage he received. A man receiving
3s. for a day of twelve hours, produced, we will say for the
sake of illustration, surplus- value to the amount of Is.;
after the introduction of machinery he received the same
wage and produced an enormously increased surplus- value.

18 MODERN SOCIALISM.

Thus the fortunes of the lucky possessors of the new
machinery rose by " leaps and bounds " ; lads who began
at the loom were owners of palaces by middle age ; even
later on, after the first rush had spent itself, I have myself
met Lancashire cotton-lords who were mill-hands in their
youth ; but most certainly their wealth had only been made
by the results of the toil of many becoming concentrated in
the hands of one.

Another step was taken to increase surplus- value. De-
pending, as it does, on the difference between the value
produced by the worker and the amount paid to him as
wage, it is obvious that if it be possible to obtain the same
amount of produce from purchased labor-force while re-
ducing the purchase-money, the surplus- value will become
larger. This step was soon taken, for it was found that
many machines could be superintended by a woman quite
as effectively as by a man, while female labor-force was

Eurchasable in the market at a lower rate. Hence the
irge introduction of female "hands" into cotton mills, and
as married women were found more "docile" than un-
married— docility increasing with the number of mouths
crying for bread at home — there came the double curse on
the producers, of male labor being pushed aside by female
labor at lower wage, and of untidy home and neglected
children, bereft of mother's care. Yet another step. Child-
labor was cheaper even than woman-labor, and by utilising
children, with their pitiful wage, surplus- value might be
swollen to yet larger proportions ; and as wives had fought
with husbands for wage, so children now fought with
fathers and mothers, until verily a man's foes in the labor-
market were they of his own household.

There was, however, a way of increasing surplus-value
apart from the amount of daily wage. The lengthening of
the hours of labor has obviously the same result in this
respect as the lowering of wage. The very zenith of the
production of surplus- value, the most complete exploitation
of the producers, the perfect triumph of the capitalist ideal
of free contract and of laissez-faire, were reached when little
children, at nominal wage, were worked from fifteen to
sixteen hours a day, and princely fortunes were built up
by human sacrifice to the devil of greed, in fashion that
shall never, so help us tongue, and pen, and arm, be again
possible in this fair English land.

MODERN SOCIALISM. 19

We have at the present time no exact figures available
which can enable us to judge of the precise amount of sur-
plus value produced in the various departments of industry.
In America, the Bureaus of Labor Statistics help us, and
from these we learn some suggestive facts.

Average wage paid Extra net value pro-

to worker. duced by worker.

1850 .. £49 12 .. .. £41 16

1860 . . 58 8 . . . . 65 10

1870 .. 62 0 .. .. 69 0

1880 . . 69 4 . . . . 64 14

(Taken from Laurence Gronlund's quotation of these re-
turns in his "Co-operative Commonwealth", chap. i. The
same figures, as regards total net produce and wages paid,
have appeared in a capitalist work.) I trust that we shall
soon have in England Labor Bureaus similar to those now
existing in the United States and in Canada. Charles
Bradlaugh, M.P., has succeeded in passing a resolution in
favor of the official publication of similar statistics through
the House of Commons, and among the many priceless ser-
vices he has done to the workers, the obtaining of these is by
no means the least. Exact knowledge of the present state
of things is a necessary precedent of organic change, and
the figures supplied by the Labor Bureaus will give us
the very weapons that we need.

The absolutely antithetical interests of Capital and
Labor have necessitated — and must continue to necessitate
while the present system lasts — a constant and embittered
war. As Capital can only grow by surplus value, it strives
to lengthen the working day and to decrease the daily
wage. Labor struggles to shorten the hours of toil, and
to wring from Capital a larger share of its own product in
the form of higher wage. While Capital is the possession
of one class, and Labor is the only property of the other,
this strife must go on. There can never be industrial
peace until this root of war be pulled up, and until Capital,
under the control of the community, shall be used for the
fertilisation, instead of for the oppression of Labor.

Since large fortunes are made by manufacturers, and
there is no source of wealth save labor applied to natural
objects, it is clear that these fortunes are due to the fact
that the manufacturers are able to become the owners of

c2

20 MODEKN SOCIALISM.

the means of production and of labor-force ; even these very
means of production, with which the present labor-force
works, are but past labor-force crystallised. The wage-
earners must produce sufficient to maintain themselves
from day to day and to increase the capital of the wage-
payers, else they will not be employed. Hence arises
another evil, the waste of productive force. Men are not
employed because their labor-force, embodied in the neces-
saries of life, will spread sufficiency and comfort throughout
the community. They are only employed when the articles
produced can be sold at a profit by a third party ; their
products, fairly exchanged for the products of their fellow-
laborers — woven cloth, say, for shoes — would clothe warmly
the shivering population ; but above the cloth produced by
the one, and the shoes produced by the other, stand the
capitalists, who demand profit for themselves ere the cloth
shall be allowed to shield the naked back, or the shoes
keep off the pavement the toes blued by the frost. If the
employment fails, the wage-earner is out of food ; but the
erstwhile wage-payer has the capital made by the former
to live upon, while its maker starves. The capitalist, truly,
cannot increase his capital, unless he can buy labor-force ;
but he can live on his capital. On the other hand the
labor-force must perish unless it can find a purchaser.
Let us put the position plainly, for as the great majority
•of people think the arrangement a perfectly fair one, there
is no need to cover it over with a veil of fine phrases and
roundabout expressions. The owner of raw material and
of the means of production faces the unpropertied pro-
letarian, and says to him : "I hold in my hands the means
of existence ; unless you can obtain the means of existence
you will die ; but I will only let you have them on one
condition. And that is that you shall labor for me as
well as for yourself. For each hour that you spend in
winning bread, you shall spend another in enriching me.
I will give you the right to win a hard existence by your
labor, if you will give me the right to take whatever you
produce beyond that bare existence. You are perfectly
free to choose ; you can either accept my terms, and let
me live on your work, or you can refuse my terms, and
starve." Put so baldly, the proposition has a certain
brutality in it. Yet when we Socialists argue that a system
is bad which concentrates the means of existence in the

MODERN SOCIALISM. 21

hands of a propertied class, and leaves an unpropertied
class under the hard condition of winning only the right
to exist on such .terms as may be granted by the propertied ;
when we urge this, we are told that we are incendiaries,
thieves, idiots, or, at the mildest, that our hopes of freeing
these enslaved ones are dreams, mere castles in the air.

We have now reached the foundation of modern So-
cialism. We say : As long as the industrial classes are
divided into capitalists and proletarians, so long must con-
tinue the present strife, and the present extremes of wealth
and of poverty. It is not a mere modification, but a com-
plete revolution of the industrial system which is required.
Capital must be controlled by labor, instead of controlling
it. The producers must obtain possession of their own
product, and must regulate their own labor. The present
system has been weighed in the balances and found wanting,
and on the wall of the capitalist banqueting- room is written
by the finger of modern thought, dipped in the tears and
in the bloody sweat of the over-tasked proletariat: "Man
hath numbered thy kingdom and finished it. It is divided
among the myriads thou hast wronged."

COMPETITION.

Strife is the normal condition of the whole industrial
world ; Capital strives against -Labor, and Labor against
Capital, lock-outs and strikes being the pitched battles of
the struggle ; capitalists strive against capitalists for profits,
and the list of the vanquished may be read in the bank-
ruptcy court ; workers strive against workers for wage, and
inj are their own order in the fratricidal combat. Every-
where the same struggle, causing distress, waste, hatred,
in every direction ; brothers wronging brothers for a trifling
gain ; the strong trampling down the weak in the frantic
race for wealth. It is the struggle of the wild beasts of
the forest transferred to the city ; the horrible struggle
for existence, only in its "civilised" form hearts are
wrenched and torn instead of limbs.

It is constantly urged that competition is advantageous
because it develops capacity, and by the struggle it causes
it brings about the survival of the fittest. The allegation
may be traversed on two grounds : granting that capacity
is developed by struggle, it is yet developed at great cost
of suffering, and it would be more worthy of reasoning

22 MODERN SOCIALISM.

Beings to seek to bring about the capacity and to avoid the
suffering ; to borrow an illustration which suggests itself
by the very word " struggle ", we know that actual fighting
develops muscle, endurance, readiness of resource, quick-
ness of the senses ; none the less do we regard war as a
disgrace to a civilised people, and we find that the useful
capacities developed by it may be equally well developed
in the gymnasium and the playing-field, without the evils
accompanying war. So may education take the place of
competition in developing useful qualities. Further we
deny that "the fittest" for social progress survive in the
competitive struggle. The hardest, the keenest, the most
unscrupulous, survive, because such are the fittest for the
brutal strife ; but the generous, the magnanimous, the
just, the tender, the thoughtful, the sympathetic, the very
types in whose survival lies the hope of the race, are
crushed out. In fact, competition is war, and the very
reasons which move us to endeavor to substitute arbitra-
tion for war, should move us to endeavor to substitute
co-operation for competition.

But it is urged, competition among capitalists is advan-
tageous to the public, and it is shown that where two or
three railway lines compete for custom, the public is better
served than where there is only one. Granted. There is
an old adage which says that "when thieves fall out,
honest men come by their own " ; none the less is it better
to stop thieving, than to encourage it under the hope that
the thieves may fall out, and some of the stolen goods be
recovered. So long as capitalists are permitted to exploit
labor, so long is it well that they should compete with each
other and so have their profits lessened ; but it would be
still better to stop the exploitation. Accepting the railway
instance, it may be rejoined that the German State railways
have comfortable carriages that can hold their own against
all comers, and that whereas a railway company, eager for
dividends, can only be forced into providing decent carri-
ages by fear of losing customers to a rival, a State railway
is managed for the benefit of the public, and improvements
are readily introduced. Our post-office system shows how
improvements are made without any pressure of competi-
tion ; it has given us cheaper postage, cheaper telegraphing,
and is giving us cheaper parcel-delivery ; so that we can
send from London a letter to Wick for a penny, a telegram

MOBERX SOCIALISM. 23

thither for sixpence, and a parcel for threepence ; it is a
matter of pride to the Postmaster-General of the day, as a
public servant, to improve his department, although he is
protected by law (save in the case of parcels, only just
undertaken) from competition.

Even some economists who approve of competition see
the need of limiting its excesses. Mr. B. S. Moffat, for
instance, approves of it and thinks that "competition is
not only the best, but the only practical means of meet-
ing" "the conflicting natural conditions, between the
exigencies of an unknown demand and the fluctuations of
an uncertain supply", "that ever has been, or is ever
likely to be, discovered" ("The Economy of Consump-
tion," p. 114, ed. 1878). Yet Mr. Moffat points out that
" the material cost of competition includes two items : first,
superfluous production, or wasted labor ; and secondly, ill-
balanced distribution, or misdirected labor " (p. 115); and
he declares: "Not content with promoting a healthful
industry, it enforces tyrannous laws upon labor, and exacts
from the free laborer an amount of toil which the hardest
taskmaster never succeeded in wringing from the slave.
It disturbs by its excesses the balance of industry which
its moderation had established. In times of prosperous
production it accumulates stocks till they become a nuisance
and a source of the most serious embarrassment to pro-
ducers, who do not know where to turn for employment to
their productive resources ; and in adverse times it gambles
with them, and deprives consumption of their support at
the very time for which they were provided" (pp. 116, 117).
"It is upon laborers", he says, " not only as individuals,
but as a class, that the great burden of over-production
falls" (p. 119).

I propose to consider, I., the evils of competition ; H.,
the remedy proposed by Socialism.

I. — THE EVILS. — Many of these lie on the surface ; others
become palpable on very slight investigation. They affect
the capitalist manufacturer ; the distributor ; the con-
sumer ; and the producing classes.

An ingenious capitalist sees a want and devises an article
to meet it ; or he devises an article and sets to work to
create the want. He places his article before the public,
and a demand for it arises. The article either supplies a
real want, or it becomes "the fashion", and the demand

24 MODERN SOCIALISM.

increases and outstrips the supply. Other capitalists rush
in to compete for the profit which is to be made ; capital
flows rapidly into the particular industry concerned ; high
wages are offered ; operatives flock to it ; the supply swells-
until it overtops the demand. But when this point is
touched, the supply is not at once lessened ; so long as
there is any hope of profit, the capitalists manufacture ;
wage is lessened to keep up the profit, but this expedient
fails ; short hours are worked ; at last the market becomes
thoroughly overstocked. Then distress follows, and while
capital seeks new outlets, the operatives fall into the great
army of unemployed ; and very often the small capitalists,
who went into the rush just when profit was at its highest,
and who have not sufficient capital to hold out against the
fall, and to await a rise, meet the fate of earthenware
pots, carried down a torrent among iron ones. When this
happens, the result of their speculative folly is held up as
an example of the "risks run by capitalists ". Nor is this
the only way along which a small capitalist sometimes
travels to the bankruptcy court. He often borrows money
"to extend his business", and if the business shrinks
instead of expanding, he becomes bankrupt. In the uni-
versal war, the big capitalist fish devour the small fry.

And, after all, even the "successful man" of our com-
petitive society is not one whose lot is to be envied by
the healthy human being. Not for him the pure joy in
natural beauty, in simple amusements, in intellectual
triumph, which is the dower of those unstained by the
fight for gold. For the successful competitor in com-
mercial war Nature has no laurel-crown. He has bartered
himself for a mess of pottage, and his birthright of healthy
humanity is gone from him for evermore. Well does
Moff at write his fate : "The man who strives to make a
fortune contemplates his own ease and enjoyment, not the
good of society. He flatters himself that through his
superior skill, tact, wisdom, energy, or whatever quality it
is he thinks himself twice as strong in as his neighbors,
he will be able to do in half a lifetime what it takes them
their whole lives to do. For this he toils and sacrifices his
health ; for this he rushes upon reckless speculations, and
hazards his character and reputation ; for this he makes
himself indifferent to the rights and callous to the feelings
of others ; for this he is sordid, mean, and parsimonious.

MODERN SOCIALISM. 25

All these are the means by which, according to different
temperaments, the same end is pursued. And what is the
end? An illusion, nay, worse, a dishonesty. The man
who pursues a fortune is not qualifying himself for any
other course of life besides that which he at present lives.
He is merely striving to escape from duty into enjoyment.
And the fever of the strife frequently becomes his whole
existence ; so that when he has obtained his object, he finds
himself unable to do without the excitement of the struggle"
(p. 220). Surely in judging the merits of a system it is
fair to take into account the injuries it works to its most
successful products. Its masterpieces are the withered and
dehumanised ; its victims are the paupers and the suicides.

Nor can we leave out of account in studying competitive
production the waste of material, and of the time spent in
working it up, which result from over-production. The
accumulation of stock while the demand is lessening means
the making and storing of unneeded wares. Some of these
are forced into the market, some lie idly in the great
warehouses. The retail dealers find themselves over-
stocked, their shelves laden with unsaleable goods. These
fade, and spoil, and rust away — so much good material
wasted, so much human labor spent for nought, monu-
ments of a senseless system, of the barbarous, uncalcu-
lating blindness of our productive force.

More heavily yet than on the capitalist does competition
press on the distributor. A dozen traders compete for the
custom which one could satisfactorily supply. The com-
petition for shops in a thickly populated neighborhood
drives up the rent, and so adds to the retailer's burden. He
is compelled to spend large sums in advertising, striving
by brilliancy of color or eccentricity of design to impress
himself on the public mind. An army of commercial
travellers sweeps over the country, each man with his
hand against his neighbor in the same trade, pushing,
haggling, puffing his own, depreciating his rival's wares.
These agents push their goods on the retailer, often when
no real demand for them is coming from the public, and
then the retailer puffs them, to create a demand on his
supply. Nor must we omit from notice the enormous
waste of productive energy in this army of canvassers,
advertisers, bill-posters, multiplied middlemen of every
kind. The distributive work done by these is absurdly out

26 MODERN SOCIALISM.

of proportion to their number. We see several carriers'
carts half -filled, instead of half the number filled; each
carrier has to deliver goods over the whole of a wide area,
so that a man may have to drive five miles to deliver a
single parcel at a house a stone's throw from a rival office.
Yet each man must receive his full day's wage, and must
be paid for the hours he is compelled to waste, as well
as for those he spends in useful work. It is the same
thing in every business. Three or four carts of each
trade daily down each road, covering the same ground,
supplying each one house here and one there, losing time,
wearing out horses and traps, a foolish shameful waste.
And all these unnecessary distributors are consumers when
they might be producers, and are actually making unneces-
sary work for others as well as for themselves.

Short-sighted people ask : Would you add all these to
the crowds of half-starving unemployed now competing
for work ? No, we answer. We would not add them to
the tmemployed ; it is only in a system of complete com-
petitive anarchy that there could be unemployed labor on
the one hand, and people clamoring for the necessaries
of life on the other. We have already seen that under
the present system men are only employed where some
profit can be made out of them by the person who hires
them. Under a saner system there would be none unem-
ployed while the food and clothing supply was insufficient,
and the turning of non-productive consumers into produc-
tive ones would only mean shorter hours of labor, since
the labor necessary to supply the consumption of the
population would be divided among a larger number than
before. If wealth be the result of labor applied to raw
material, poverty may come from the pressure of popula-
tion on the raw material which limits the means of sub-
sistence, but never from the greater part of the population
working to produce wealth on raw material sufficient for
their support.

On the consumer falls much of the needless additional
expense of advertisements, canvassers, and the rest. The
flaming advertisements we see on the walls we pay for in
the price of the puffed articles we buy. The trader feels
their burden, and tries to recoup himself by adding a
fraction of it to the price of the goods he sells. If he is
forced to lower his nominal prices in consequence of the

MODERN SOCIALISM. 27

pressure of competition with his rivals, yet by adulteration
he can really raise, while he seems to lower, them. The
nominal width of fabrics does not correspond with the
real ; woollen goods are sold of which the warp is cotton ;
tobacco is sold damped unfairly to increase its weight ;
sand is mixed with sugar ; lard or dripping with butter ;
chicory with coffee ; sloe-leaves with tea ; turnip with
orange in marmalade ; foreign meat is offered as home-
grown ; damaged flesh is chopped up for sausages ; until,
at last, as Moffat caustically remarks : "It is not rogues
and vagabonds alone who have recourse in trade to ex-
pedients which could not be justified by a strict theoretical
morality. When this incline is entered upon, there is no
resting upon it. Morality itself becomes subject to com-
petition ; and the conventional standard of trade morality
gets lower and lower, until the things done by respectable
people can hardly be distinguished from those done by
people who are not respectable, except by the respectability
of the people who do them" (p. 154). And in all this
adulteration the consumer suffers in health, comfort, and
temper. Not only does he pay more than he should for
what he buys, but he buys a good deal more than he
pays for.

Heaviest of all is the burden on the operative classes,
and they suffer in a double character, both as consumers
and producers. As consumers, they share the general in-
jury ; as producers, their case is yet more serious. If they
are in work, their wages are driven down by the competi-
tion for employment ; they are the first to feel a lessening
demand in lengthened hours, in lower wage ; as the de-
pression goes on, they are thrown out of work ; illness not
only incapacitates them for the time, but their place is filled
up, while they lie helpless, by the eager waiters for hire ;
when they combine to strike for fairer treatment, the fringe
of unemployed labor around is used against them by the
employers ; the lowest depth is reached by the crowd who
at the dockyard gates at the East of London literally fight
for a place in which the foreman's eye may fall on them,
and out of the struggling hundreds units are taken on for
the day at miserable wage for heavy exhausting work, to
be turned out at night to undergo a similar struggle next
morning.

The only classes who gain by competition are the big

28 MODERN SOCIALISM.

capitalists and the landlords. The big capitalists engaged
in manufacture gain by the crushing out of their smaller
rivals, and by their ability to hold over stocks produced
when wages are low until prices are high. Capitalists
who only lend out money on usury, and live on the interest
thereby obtained, flourish when the demand for money is
brisk. Most of all do landlords, who live on rent, profit
by the struggle. In a growing neighborhood rents of
commercial premises rise rapidly, and the shopkeeper finds
himself heavily taxed by the landlord, who imposes on him
practically a graduated income-tax for his own advantage.
Thus the chief gainers by competition are the idlers who
are permitted to hold the nation's soil, and who live in
luxury on the toilers, laughing to see how the fratricidal
struggles of those who labor turn to the advantage of
those who lounge. And so the strain of living constantly
increases for the one class, while the luxury and ostenta-
tion of those who levy tax on toil become ever greater,
and more aggressive by the contrast.

II. THE REMEDY. — These evils can be radically cured
only in one way ; it is by the substitution of co-operation
for competition, of organisation for anarchy in industry.
The relation of employer and employed must disappear,
and a brotherhood of workers, associated for facilitation
of production for use, must replace the band of servants
toiling for the enrichment of a master by profit. The full
details of socialised industry cannot be drawn at length ;
but it is not difficult to see that the already existent co-
operative societies offer a suggestive model, and the trades
unions a sufficiently competent means for change. Pro-
bably each industry in each district will organise itself,
and own, for use, all its means of production ; thus the
miners of Durham, for instance, organised in their lodges,
with their central executive, would form the mining trade
society of that district ; all the mines of that district
would be under their control, and they would elect their
officers of all grades. So with all mining districts through-
out the land. These separate trade societies would be
federated, and a General Board elected by all. The
elements of such a self-organised industry exist at the
present time, and the more closely the miners can band
themselves into district unions, and the unions into a
national federation, the more prepared will they be to play

MODERN SOCIALISM. 29

their part in the great industrial revolution. It is probable
that something of the nature of the royalties now paid to
the individual mine-owners will be paid into the National
Exchequer, in exchange for the right to work the national
soil. A similar organisation would be needed for each
productive industry, and probably representatives of each
separate industry would form a central Industrial Board.
But, I repeat, these details cannot now be laid down autho-
ritatively, any more than the details of the present in-
dustrial competitive system could have been laid down
before the Industrial Period. On these details Socialists
would inevitably differ considerably at the present time,
and no special scheme can be fairly stamped as " Socialist "
to the exclusion of the rest. But on this main principle all
Socialists are agreed; that the only rightful holders of
capital are industrial groups, or one great industrial group
— the State, i.e., the organised community; that while
individuals may hold private property for use, none should
hold capital — that is wealth employed in production — for-
individual profit ; that while each may have property to
consume and to enjoy, none should be allowed to use
property to enslave his neighbor, to force another to work
for his advantage.

The revolution in distribution will be as great as that
in production, and here again co-operation must take the
place of competition. We already see the beginnings of a
distributive change in the establishment of huge stores for
the supply of all the necessaries of life, and the way in
which these are crushing out the smaller retail shops.
Housewives find it more convenient to go to the single
building, than to trudge wearily from shop to shop. Q-oods
bought in very large quantities can be sold more cheaply
than if bought in small, and economy, as well as con-
venience, attract the purchaser to the store. At present
these stores are founded by capitalists and compete for
custom, but they are forerunners of a rational distributive
system. The very enmity they create in the minds of the
small traders they ruin is paving the way for the com-
munity to take them over for the general advantage.
Under Socialism all goods manufactured by the producers
would be distributed to the central store of each district ;
from this central store they would be distributed to the
retail stores. Anyone who thinks such distribution im-

30 MODERN SOCIALISM.

possible had better study the postal system now existing ;
we do not have post-offices jostling each other as do
baker's and butcher's shops : there are sufficient of them
for the requirements of the district, and no more. The
letters for a town are delivered at the General Post Office ;
they are sorted out and delivered at the subordinate offices ;
the distribution of the correspondence of millions is carried
on by a Government Department, quietly, effectively,
without waste of labor, with celerity and economy. But
then in the Post Office co-operation has replaced com-
petition, organisation has replaced anarchy. Such a system,
one hundred years ago, would have been pronounced
impossible, as the Conservative minds of to-day pronounce
impossible its extension to anything except letters and
telegrams and parcels. I look for the time when the
success of the Post Office will be repeated — and improved
— in every department of distribution.

CAPITAL.

We have already seen that Capital is accumulated by
withholding from the producer a large part of the value he
produces, and we have now to look more closely into the
growth of Capital and the uses to which it is put. A
glance over the historical Past, as well as the study of
the Present, inform us that Capital has always been — as
indeed it always must be — obtained from unpaid labor, or,
if the phrase be preferred, by the partial confiscation of
the results of labor. In communities the economic basis of
which was slave-labor, this fact was obvious ; the owner
confiscated the whole products of his slaves' toil, and he
became a capitalist by this process of continued confiscation ;
while the slave, fed, clothed, and housed out of the fruit
of his own labor by his master, never owned anything as of
right, nor had any property in that which he created. As
civilisation advanced, serf -labor replaced slave-labor ; here
also the confiscation of the results of labor was obvious.
The serf was bound to give so many days of work to his
lord without payment; this service rendered, the remainder
of his time was his own, to produce for his own subsist-
ence ; but the lord's capital increased by the confiscation
of the results of the serf's labor during the days whereon
he worked for his lord. In modern times "free labor"
has replaced serf -labor, but in the present industrial system,

MODEKN SOCIALISM. 31

as truly as in slave and in serf communities, Capital results
from unpaid labor, though now from the unpaid labor of
the wage-earner. We may search the whole world over,
and we shall find no source of wealth save labor applied
to natural agents. Wealth is never rained down from
heaven, nor is it ever a spontaneous growth ; unless indeed
wild fruits taken for food be counted wealth, and even to
these must human labor be applied in the form of picking
ere they can be used. It is the result of human labor ;
and if one man has more than he has produced, it neces-
sarily follows that another man has less than he has pro-
duced. The gain of one must be the loss of another. There
are but sixteen court cards in the fifty-two, and if by in-
genious shuffling, packing, and dealing, all the court card»
fall to one player, only the lower cards can remain for the
others.

Separating "Capital" from "Wealth" we may conve-
niently define it as "wealth devoted to purposes of profit",
and as "wealth is the result of labor applied to raw ma-
terial", Capital becomes the result of labor devoted to
purposes of profit. John Stuart Mill says the " accumu-
lated stock of the produce of labor is termed Capital ".
Macleod : " Capital is any Economic Quantity used for the
purpose of Front ". Senior: "Economists are agreed that
whatever gives a profit is properly called Capital ". Some-
thing more, however, than the activity of labor is implied
in the existence of Capital. There must have been saving,
as well as production. Hence Marshall speaks of Capital
as "the result of labor and abstinence "; Mill of Capital
as " the result of saving" ; and so on. It is obvious that
if the products of labor were consumed as fast as they
were made, Capital could not exist. We have, therefore,
reached this certainty when we contemplate Capital ; some-
one has worked, and has not consumed all that he has
produced.

Under these circumstances, we should expect to find
Capital in the hands of industrious and abstinent pro-
ducers. But as Mill very justly points out : " In a rude
and violent state of society it continually happens that the
person who has Capital is not the very person who has
saved it, but some one who, being stronger, or belonging
to a more powerful community, has possessed himself of
it by plunder. And even in a state of things in which

32 MODERN SOCIALISM.

property was protected, the increase of Capital has usually
been, for a long time, mainly derived from privations
which, though essentially the same with saving, are not
generally called by that name, because not voluntary. The
actual producers have been slaves, compelled to produce
as much as force could extort from them, and to consume
as little as the self-interest or the usually very slender
humanity of their task-masters would permit." How
many of our great capitalists have produced and saved
until they accumulated the fortunes they possess ? These
fortunes are greater than any human being could save
out of his makings, even if he lived most abstemiously,
instead of with the luxury and ostentation of a Rothschild
or a Vanderbilt. But if they have not made and saved,
how come they to possess ? Mill gives the answer, though
he did not mean it to be applied to modern industrialism.
" In a rude and violent state of society " Capital is not in
the hands of the producer and saver, but in the hands of
those who possess themselves "of it by plunder" — legal-
ised plunder, in our modern days. The "saving" is not
voluntary; it is " derived from privations "; the " actual
producers " are wage-earners, who are " compelled to pro-
duce as much as" pressure can extort from them, and to
"consume as little" in the form of wage as they can be
beaten down to by the competition of the labor-market.
These men " have labored, and " others " have entered into
their labors ".

A very brief comparison of those who produce and save,
and those who possess themselves of the results of labor
and abstinence, will suffice to show the inequality which
characterises the present system. The worker lives hardly
and dies poor, bequeathing to his children the same neces-
sity of toil : I do not forget that the more fortunate workers
have shares in Building Societies, a few pounds in the
Savings Bank, and even an interest in a Burial Club, so
that the parish may not have the expense of burying them ;
but I say that these poor successes — vast indeed in the
aggregate, but paltry when the share of the individual is
looked at— bear no kind of reasonable proportion to the
wealth created by the worker during his life-time. On
the other hand the capitalist either starts with inherited
wealth, grows richer, and bequeaths the increased wealth
to his children; or he begins poor, saves a little, then

MODERX SOCIALISM. 33

makes others work for him, grows rich, and bequeaths his
wealth. In the second generation, the capitalist can simply
invest his wealth and live on the interest ; and since all in-
terest must be paid out of the results of labor, the workers
not only lose a large proportion of their produce, but this
very confiscated produce is made into a future burden for
them, and while the fathers build up the capitalist, the
children must toil to maintain his children in idleness.

Capital may also be accumulated by the ownership of raw
material, since no wealth can be produced until labor can
get at this. The question of rent will be considered under
the head of Land ; here we are only concerned with the
fact that wealth appropriated in this way is investible, and
on this also interest can be obtained.

Now the enormous burden placed on labor by the invest-
ment of money at interest, is not appreciated as it ought
to be. The interest on the National Debt, including termi-
nable annuities, amounted in 1884-5 to £28,883,672 12s.;
how much is paid in dividends on railway, tram-car, and
companies' shares, it would be difficult to discover. Mr.
Giffen, in his " Progress of the Working Classes ", esti-
mates that the capitalist classes receive from capital — ex-
cluding "wages of superintendence" and salaries — some
£400,000,000 a year. In 1881, the income-tax returns
quoted by Mr. Giffen show that the income from capital
was no less than £407,000,000, and in estimating those in
Schedules B and D (Part I.) Mr. Giffen certainly takes care
to make the gains on "idle capital" as small as he can.
Mr. Giffen takes the aggregate income of the whole nation
at about £1,200,000,000, so that according to his own
figures Capital takes more than a third part of the national
income. I should be prepared to contend that the burden
on the producers is heavier than he makes out, but even
taking his own calculations the result is bad enough. For
all this money which goes to capitalists is money not earned
by the receivers — mark that all which is in any sense
earned, as wages of superintendence, etc., is excluded — and
by all this is lessened the share of the produce of labor
which goes to labor.

We have already dealt with the way in which the worker
suffers injustice when capital is invested in machinery
owned by private individuals ; we have now to consider
the portion of it used as loans, cases in which the capitalist

D

34 MODERN SOCIALISM.

takes no part in the management of any industrial con-
cern, but merely lends his money at usury, living on the
interest he receives. There is so much confusion of thought
on this subject, so much idea that a man has "a right"
to invest money at interest, that it is necessary to try to
get at the "bed-rock" of the question. Take the case of
a man who earns 30s. in a week ; suppose he spends 20s.
and saves 10s. For the 20s. he spends he receives their
equivalent in commodities, and these he consumes ; he has
had his "money's worth", and he is content, and if he
requires more commodities he knows he must labor again
to earn their equivalent in money. The 10s. he has saved,
however, are to have a different fate ; they represent, also,
so much possibility of possession of their equivalent in
commodities which he could consume ; but he desires to
defer this consumption to a future day, to defer it, perhaps,
until he is too old to give labor in exchange for his needs.
One might suppose that the equivalent of commodities for
the 10s. would be as satisfactory as the equivalent of com-
modities for the 20s. But it is not so. He desires to in-
vest his 10s. at interest; let us suppose he invests it at 5
per cent. ; at the end of twenty years he will have received
back his 10s. by instalments of 6d. a year, and will have
exchanged it for 10s. worth of commodities ; yet at the end
of the twenty years he expects to receive back in addition
his full 10s. ; to have spent it all, and yet to find it un-
diminished ; so that for his 10s. saved he expects to receive
20s. worth of commodities in twenty years, to have his
labor paid for twice over. In the case of money only is it
possible to eat your cake and have it, and after you have
eaten it to pass it on as large as ever to your descendants,
so that they may eat it and yet find it, like the widow's
cruse, ever miraculously renewed.

Those who defend usury do so generally on its supposed
collateral advantages, rather than on its central theory. It
is argued that "if a man gets no interest on Ms savings, he
has no incitement to work ". To this it may be answered : (a)
That there is clearly no incitement to work on the part of
those who live on interest, since their money comes tumbling
in whether they work or idle ; it is the labor of others on
which the interest-receiver lives, (b) That the incitement
to work would be greater if the reward of work were not
diminished by the imposition on it of a tax for the benefit

MODERN SOCIALISM. 35

•of the idle ; surely the abstraction of £400,000,000 annually
for interest can hardly act as an incitement to those whose
labor returns are diminished to that extent, (c) That the
real incitement to work is the desire to possess the result
of labor, and that the more completely that desire is satis-
fied the greater will the incitement become. Would the
incitement to tramcar employees be lessened, if the necessity
of paying 10 per cent, on shareholders' capital no longer
kept down their wages ? But, in truth, this argument as
to incitement to workers is either ignorant, or disingenuous.
The mainspring of the worker's toil is, as a matter of fact,
compulsion, not the incitement of hope of reward. Had
he control over the product of his own labor, then the
desire to obtain more might incite him to work harder, as,
indeed, has been found to be the case with piece-work, and
in co-operative undertakings: with his fixed wage it is to
him a matter of indifference how much or how little he
produces. The desire for interest is an incitement to the
capitalist to press his wage-toilers to work harder, so that
after he has satisfied his own power of consumption he
may lay by all the surplus value he can squeeze out of
them, and increase the capital he has out at interest. The
higher the interest obtainable, the greater the compulsion
to work put upon the producers. But this compulsion is
clearly an evil, not a good, and in the case of the tramcar
employees just cited, it is compulsion which forces them to
accept the long hours of labor, and the compulsion is exer-
cised in order to obtain interest for the shareholders.

" The incitement to thrift icill disappear" But («) the
interest obtainable by "thrift" is too small to serve as an
incitement, for the savings of the industrious poor are not
sufficient to give interest enough to subsist on. The Savings
Banks are resorted to as a convenient place wherein to put
money saved for future use ; it is the safe keeping of the
money "for a rainy day ", not the trifling interest, which is
the attraction to the anxious poor. The small amount per-
mitted to an individual and the low interest are sufficient
proofs of this assertion ; no one must put in more than £30
in a year, the interest is only 2^- per cent., and this is not
paid yearly, but is added to the principal. And this future
necessity is the real incitement to thrift. A man earns, say,
sufficient this week to support himself for a fortnight ;
having satisfied his needs, he does not want to satisfy them

D2

36 MODERN SOCIALISM:.

twice over ; he knows that some years hence his power of
work will have disappeared, while his necessity of consump-
tion will remain, and he defers his consumption of half the
results of his labor till that time. Why should he look
for added power of consumption as a reward for deferring
his consumption for his own convenience? Without in-
terest, thoughtful people would save, for the sake of com-
fort in their old age. It may however be conceded that
the incitement to annex the results of the thrift of others-
— the only way in which big fortunes can be made — will
disappear with the disappearance of interest, and the pos-
sibility of living idly by taxing the labor of others.

"It will not be possible to get money for railroads, tramcars,
etc., if interest on share capital disappears." But the indes-
tructible reason for making railroads, tramways, etc., is the
need for the conveniences they afford. And Socialism
would place the making and carrying on of all means of
transit in the hands of local bodies, municipalities, and so
forth, who would raise the requisite funds from the com-
munity which is to enjoy the increased facilities. These
funds would be used in remuneration of the labor expended
on them, and none would have a right to levy a perpetual
tax on the public on the pretence of having lent the
money originally employed in the construction. Now a
man claims the right to tax all future labors and all future
consumers for the benefit of his posterity, as a reward
for having worked and saved, or mostly as a reward for
having transferred into his own pockets the results of his
neighbor's toil. It is time that the immorality of this claim
should be pointed out, and that people should be told that
while they may rightly save and live on their savings,
they ought not to use their savings for the enslavement
and the taxing of other people. An effective step towards
the abolition of interest might be taken by the closing of
the sources of idle investment, the taking over by local
bodies of the local means of transit, the gas and water
supply, etc., while the central authority takes over the
railways. The question of compensation would be solved
with the least amount of injustice to exploiters and ex-
ploited by paying over a yearly dividend to shareholders
until the dividends amounted to a sum equal to the nominal
value of the shares held; thus a £100 share would be
extinguished by the payment of a sum of £10 annually for

MODERX SOCIALISM. 37

ten years, leaving the shareholder richer than he was
originally by all the interest received during the past, but
terminating his right to tax within a brief period.

There is, however, one argument in favor of interest
which brings conviction to many minds ; an individual
wants to perform a piece of productive work, but has no
•capital and is unable to do it; he borrows the capital and
performs the work ; since the man who lent the capital has
facilitated the doing of the work, ought he not to share
in the product, which would have had no existence but for
his capital ? Now it might be answered to this that if his
capital is returned to him in full he has lost nothing by
the transaction, but has, on the contrary, gained the ad-
vantage of having his money taken care of without trouble
to himself, and returned to him uninjured at the time that
he requires it. But the real answer is that interest is in-
evitable so long as Capital remains in private hands, so
long as individuals are permitted to annex the results of
the unpaid labor of others, and so manufacture a lien on.
all future industry. Interest will only be abolished when
the results of the past unpaid labor of many are held by
the many to facilitate the future labor of many. Now,
industry can only be carried on with the permission and
the assistance of those whose stores of wealth have been
piled up for them by thousands of patient toilers ; and that
permission and assistance can only be gained by taxing
labor for the enrichment of the lender. In the future those
vast stores will be used to carry on production, and while
labor will constantly replace the capital it uses in produc-
tion, it will not also be taxed for the benefit of individuals.
Interest and private property in the means of production
must stand and fall together. At the present time no law
against usury could be passed, and even were the passing
of such a law possible it would be a dead letter, so
thoroughly is the present system built on the paying of
interest. All Socialists can do for the moment is to expose
the fundamental dishonesty and injustice of usury, and so
pave the way for a better state of things.

Apart from the abuse of Capital here indicated Capital
has a function which, of course, no Socialist ignores. Capital
is necessary for all forms of industry, and its function is :
to save labor, as by machinery ; to facilitate it, by the in-
troduction of improvements therein ; to support it while it

38 MODERN SOCIALISM.

is employed in production, and until its products are ex-
changed. The true use of the savings of past labor is to
lighten future labor, to fertilise production. But in order
that it may be thus used, it must be in the hands of the
community instead of in the hands of individuals. Being^
as it is, and must be, the result of unpaid labor, it should
pass to the community to be used for the common good,,
instead of to individuals to enrich them to the common,
loss.

LAND.

It is hardly necessary to argue, at this time of day, that
Land, i.e., natural agents, ought not to be the private pro-
perty of individuals. No absolute property in land is in-
deed recognised by the laws of this realm, but the proposi-
tion that land ought not to be private property goes, of
course, much further than this legal doctrine. It declares
that the soil on which a nation lives ought to belong to
the nation ; that those who cultivate it, or who mine in it,
and who for practical purposes must have for the time the
exclusive usufruct of portions of it, should pay into the
national exchequer a duly-assessed sum, thus rendering an
equivalent for the privilege they enjoy, and making the
whole community sharers in the benefits derived from
natural agents.

The present system of permitting private ownership of
land has led to three great and increasing evils ; the esta-
blishment of an idle class, which grows richer by increas-
ingly taxing the industrious ; the divorce of the really
agricultural class from the soil ; the exodus from the country
districts into the towns.

Private ownership of natural agents must inevitably re-
sult in the first of these three evils. These natural agents
are the basis of wealth ; the very subsistence of the nation
depends on their utilisation ; yet a comparatively small class
is permitted to claim them as private property, and to appro-
priate the rent to its private use. Hence, one of the first
charges on the results of labor is rent, and rent, be it
noted, not to the community, but to an individual who has
acquired the legal right to stand between labor and land.
Now just as wage is determined practically by the standard
of living, so is rent determined by the same thing. The
landlord exacts as rent the value of the produce minus the

MODERN SOCIALISM. 39

subsistence of the tenant, and in many cases, if the farmer's
receipts sink and there is no corresponding lowering of
rent, the farmer cannot even subsist, and becomes bank-
rupt. Hence, if a farmer improves the land and so obtains
from it larger returns, the landlord steps in and raises his
rent, claiming ever as his, produce minus subsistence, and
confiscating for his own advantage the results of the labor
and invested capital of the farmer. Thus also with the
spread of commercial prosperity comes a rise in the tax
levied by the landlords ; as towns grow larger the land
around them becomes more valuable, and thus the Stanleys
grow wealthy by the growth of Liverpool, and the Gros-
venors and Russells by that of London : competition drives
up rents, and landlords may live in Italy or Turkey, and
become ever wealthier by the growth of English trade, and
the toil of English laborers. Moffat points out (" Economy
of Consumption," p. 142) that part of the retailer's profit,
and possibly the larger part of it " is purely local, and
which he could not carry away with him. It distinguishes
the site of his business, and resolves itself into rent. If
the retailer owns his own premises, he may be content with
this part of his profits, and handing the business to another
become a landlord. If they are owned by another, the owner,
unless the retailer is able to find other suitable premises
within a moderate distance, will be able to levy all the
extra profit from him in the shape of rent. Hence the
rapid rise of rents in the central localities of large towns."
Socialists are accused of desiring to confiscate property but
the regular and uncensured confiscation of the property of
busy people by idlers, the bloodsucking of the landlord
leeches, pass unnoticed year by year, and Society honors
the confiscators. The expropriation of small cultivators
has been going on for the last 400 years, partly by big
landlords buying up small ones, and partly by their thefts
of common land. The story of Naboth's vineyard has been
repeated in hundreds of country districts. The exorbitant
rents demanded by landlords, with the pressure of Ameri-
can competition aided by capitalists on this side, have
ruined the farming class, while the absorption of small
holdings has turned into day-laborers at miserable wage
the class that formerly were independent tillers of the soil.
Attracted by the higher wage ruling in manufacturing
towns this dislanded class has flocked into them, has

40 MODERX SOCIALISM.

crowded into unsuitable houses, increased the slums of our
great cities, and, under most unwholesome conditions has
multiplied with terrible rapidity. This exodus has been
further quickened by the letting of formerly arable land
for sheep-pasture, and the consequent forced migration of
the no longer needed tillers. And thus have come about
the under-population of the agricultural districts, and the
over-crowding of cities : too few engaged in agricultural,
and too many competing for industrial, employment ; until
we find our own land undercultivated, and even in some
districts going out of cultivation, while food is being im-
ported to an alarming extent, and the unemployed are
becoming a menace to public tranquillity. The effect on
England of revolution abroad is apt to be overlooked in
studying our own labor difficulties. A considerable portion
of our imports represents rent and interest from estates
abroad and foreign investments. This portion would sud-
denly stop as regards any country in which a revolution
occurred, and foreign workmen were, in consequence, no
longer subjected to exploitation for the benefit of English
capitalists. Now this likelihood of foreign revolution is
yearly increasing, and Europe is becoming more and more
like a boiler with armed forces sitting on the safety valve.
The first attempt to move in the right direction is the
Land Cultivation Bill introduced into the House of Com-
mons by Charles Bradlaugh. This proposes to expropriate
landlords who hold cultivable land waste ; to give them,
as compensation, payment for twenty-five years equal in
amount to the annual value of the produce obtained from
the confiscated land — so that if there is no produce there
will be no payment ; to vest the land in the State, and to
let it, not sell it, to cultivators. Thus, if the Bill passed,
a large area of land would be nationalised early in next
year. Such an Act, followed up by others taking over all
land let on building leases as they run out — probably pay-
ing to the present landlords, for life, the original ground-
rents ; making the Land Tax an adequate rent paid to the
State ; taking back without compensation all common lands
that have been stolen ; breaking up the big estates by crush-
ing taxation; steps like these, if taken with sufficient
rapidity, may effect a complete Land Revolution without
violence, and establish Socialism so far as the ownership of
natural agents is concerned.

MODERN SOCIALISM:. 41

It is of vital importance to progress in a Socialist direc-
tion that an uncompromising resistance should be offered
to all schemes for the creation of new proprietors of the
soil. Peasant cultivators, paying rent to the State, are
good. Peasant proprietors are a mere bulwark, raised by
landlords to guard their own big estates, and will delay the
realisation of the true theory that the State should be the
only landowner. It is also important that Socialists should
popularise the idea of communal, or co-operative, farming.
There can be no doubt that cereal crops can be raised most
economically on large holdings, and such holdings should
be rented from the body or bodies representing the com-
munity by groups of cultivators, so that both large and
small farms should be found in agricultural districts. But
it must be distinctly stated that the Socialisation of Land
without the Socialisation of Capital will not solve the social
problem. No replanting of the people in the soil, no im-
proved balance of agricultural and industrial production,
will by themselves free the wage-slaves of our towns.
Means of production, as well as natural agents, must come
under the control of the community, before the triumph of
Socialism can be complete. The tendency of Radicals to
aim only at the nationalisation of land has an effect, how-
ever, which will ultimately prove of service. It irritates
the landlord class, and the landlords devote themselves to
proving that there is no essential difference between pro-
perty in Land and property in Capital. Just as they helped
to pass the Factory Acts to restrain capitalists as a retort
for the capitalist agitation against the Corn Laws, so they
will be likely to help in nationalising Capital in revenge
for the nationalisation of Land.

EDUCATION.

For the successful maintenance of a Socialist State a wide
and thorough system of national education is an absolute
necessity. A governed people may afford to be ignorant ;
a, self-ruling community must be instructed, or it must
perish. And the education contemplated by Socialism is
a very different thing from the paltry modicum of know-
ledge deemed sufficient for the "masses" to-day. Under
our present system education is a matter of class, and it
is a misnomer to call it "national" ; it is partly supported
by the parents of the children who attend the Board

42 MODERN SOCIALISM.

Schools, and partly by the rates and taxes ; it is limited to
the mere elements of learning; the one object of the
teachers is to cram the children so that they may pass
stated examinations, and thus obtain a Government grant
per head. Under Socialism the whole system will be
revolutionised, as the one aim then will be to educate in
such a way as will ensure the greatest possible healthy
development of the young, with a view to their future
position as members of a free community.

The foundations of complete social equality will be laid
in the school. All the children will be educated in the
communal schools, the only distinction being that of age.
Boys and girls will not be separated as they are now,
but a common education will prepare for common work.
Every child will be led through a course, which will em-
brace a thorough training in the elements of the various
sciences, so that in after life he may feel an intelligent
interest in each, and if his taste so lead him acquire later
a fuller knowledge of any special branches. He — and
"he " here includes " she" — will be instructed also in the
elements of art, so that the sense of beauty may be
developed and educated, and the refining influence of
instructed taste may enrich both mind and manners. A
knowledge of history, of literature, and of languages will
widen sympathy and destroy narrowness and national
prejudices. Nor will physical training be forgotten;
gymnastics, dancing, riding, athletic games, will educate
the senses and the limbs, and give vigor, quickness,
dexterity, and robustness to the frame. To this will be
superadded technical training, for these educated, cultured,
graceful lads and lasses are to be workers, every one of
them. The foundations of this technical training will be
the same for all ; all will learn to cook and scrub, to dig
and sew, and to render quick assistance in accidents ; it
is probable also that the light portions of household
duties will form part of the training of every child. But
as the child grows into the youth, natural capacities will
suggest the special training which should be given, so as
to secure for the community the full advantages which
might accrue from the varied abilities of its members. No
genius then will be dwarfed by early neglect, no rare
ability then perish for lack of culture. Individuality will
then at last find full expression, and none will need to

MODERN SOCIALISM. 4*

trample on his brother in order to secure full scope for
his own development. It is probable that each will learn
more than a single trade — an easy task when brain acute-
ness and manual dexterity have been cultured — so as to-
promote adaptability in the future industrial life.

Now to many, I fear to most, of my readers, this sketch,
of what education will be in a Socialist community will
appear a mere Utopian dream. Yet is it not worth while
for such to ask themselves : Why should not such an
education be the natural lot of every child in a well-
ordered community ? Is there anything in it superfluous-
for the thorough development of the faculties of a human
being? And if it be admitted that boys and girls thus-
educated would form nobler, completer, more many-sided
human beings than are the men and women of to-day,
is it not a rational thing to set up as an object to be
worked for the realisation of an idea which would prove
of incalciilable benefit to the community ?

It is hardly necessary to add that education, in a Socialist
State, would be "free " — i.e., supported at the public cost,
and compulsory. Free, because the education of the young^
is of vital importance to the community ; because class
distinctions can only be effaced by the training of children
in common schools ; because education is too important a
matter to be left to the whims of individuals, and if it be
removed from the parent's direction and supervision it is
not just to compel him to pay for it. Compulsory, because
the State cannot afford to leave its future citizens ignorant
and helpless, and it is bound to protect its weak members
against injustice and neglect.

Two objections are likely to be raised: the question of
cost, and the question of unfitting persons for "the dirty
work of the world, which someone must do".

As to cost. It must not be forgotten that this education
is proposed for a Socialist community. In such a State
there would be no idle adult class to be supported, but
all would be workers, so that the wealth produced would
be much greater than at the present time. Now according
to the figures of anti-Socialist Mr. Giffen, the aggregate
income of the people is at present about £1,200,000,000 ;
of this the workers are assigned by him £620,000,000;
deduct another £100,000,000 for return from investments
abroad; this leaves £480,000,000 absorbed by the non-

44 MODERN SOCIALISM.

producing class. (It must be remembered, further, that a
large number of the "workers" are unnecessary distribu-
tors, whose powers could be utilised to much better purpose
than is done to-day.) The wealth producers have to bear
the Church on their shoulders, and provide it with aii
income variously stated at from £6,000,000 to £10,000,000
a year. They have to bear the "landed interest", with
its appropriation in rents, royalties, etc., of something like
£200,000,000. They have to bear the ultimate weight of im-
perial and local taxation, estimated at about £120,000,000
ior the present year. All these charges, by whomsoever
nominally paid, have to come out of the wealth produced
by the workers. Is it then to be pretended that when the
idle class has disappeared there will not be wealth enough
produced for the education of the children, or that their
•education will be as heavy a burden as the drones are to-
day ? Nor must it be forgotten that there are millions of
acres of land that would produce wealth if labor were sent
to them, and that plenty of our idlers will there find produc-
tive work which will enormously increase the national wealth.
Nor also that the waste which results from luxurious idle
living will be of the past, and that a simpler, manlier rate
of expenditure will have replaced the gluttony and intem-
perance now prevalent in the "higher circles of society ".

But it will indeed be of vital importance that the propor-
tion of workers to non-workers shall be considered, and
that there shall not be in a Socialist community the over-
large families which are a characteristic of the present
system. Families of ten or a dozen children belong to
the capitalist system, which requires for its success a
numerous and struggling proletariat, propagating with
extreme rapidity, so as to keep up a plentiful supply of
men, women, and children for the labor-market, as well
as a supply of men for the army to be food for cannon,
and women for the streets to be food for lust. Under a
Socialist regime, the community will have something to
say as to the numbers of the new members that are to
be introduced into it, and for many years supported by it ;
and it will prefer a reasonable number of healthy, well-
educated children, to a yearly huge increase which would
overburden its industry.

As to unfitting persons for work. So long as manual work
is regarded as degrading, education, by increasing sensi-

MODERN SOCIALISM. 45

tiveness to public opinion, tends to make people shrink
from it, at least if their sensitiveness is greater than their
intelligence. But even now an educated person of strong
will and clear judgment, who knows that all useful work
is worthy of respect, finds that his education fits him to-
perform work more quickly and more intelligently than is
possible to an ignorant person ; and respecting himself in
its thorough accomplishment he is conscious of no degra-
dation. Weak persons, compelled to labor for their bread,
and aware that manual work is considered to place the
worker in a subordinate social class, feel ashamed of the
inferior position assigned to them by public opinion ; and
knowing by experience that they will be snubbed if they
treat their " superiors " as equals, they live down to their
social rank, and long to raise their children into a class
above their own. One consequence of the absurd artificial
disadvantage attached to manual work, is that the children
of the more successful workers crowd the inferior profes-
sional occupations, and a man prefers to be a clerk or a
curate on £90 a year to being an artisan on £150. But in
the Socialist State only idleness will be despised, and all
useful work will be honored. There is nothing more
intrinsically degrading in driving a plough than in driving
a pen, although the ploughman is now relegated to the
kitchen while the clerk is received in the drawing-room.
The distinction is primarily a purely artificial one, but it is
made real by educating the one type while the other is left
ignorant, and by teaching the one to look on his work as
work "fit for a gentleman", while the other is taught that
his work is held in low social esteem. Each reflects the
surrounding public opinion, and accepts the position
assigned by it. In Socialism, both will be educated
together as children ; both will be taught to look on all
work as equally honorable, if useful to the community ;
both will be cultured "gentlemen", following each his
natural bent ; the ploughman will be as used to his pen
as the clerk ; the clerk as ready to do heavy work as the
ploughman ; and as public opinion will regard them as
equals and will hold them in equal honor, neither will feel
any sense of superiority or inferiority, but they will meet
on common ground as men, as members of a social unity.
As to the physically unpleasant work — such as dealing
with sewers, dung-heaps, etc. — much of that will probably

-4G MODERN SOCIALISM.

be done by machinery, when there is no helpless class on
whose shoulders it may be bound. Such as cannot be
done by machinery, will probably be divided among a
large number, each taking a small share thereof, and the
amount done by each will thus become so insignificant,
that it will be but slightly felt. In any case the profound
selfishness, which would put all burden on a helot class,
and rather see it brutalised by the crushing weight than
bear a portion of the load on one of its fingers, must be
taught that Socialism means equality, and that the divine
right of idlers, to live at ease on the labor of others and
to be shielded by the bodies of the poor from all the un-
pleasantnesses of the world, is one of the notions against
which Socialism wars, and which must follow the corre-
lative superstition of the divine right of kings.

JUSTICE.

The pretence that under the present system there is one
law for rich and poor is so barefaced a piece of impudence,
that it is hardly worth while to refute it. Everyone knows
that a rich man is fined for an offence for which a poor
man is sent to gaol ; that no wise man goes to law unless
he has plenty of money ; that in a litigation between a rich
and a poor man, the poor man practically stands no chance,
for even if he at first succeeds the rich man can appeal,
and secure in the power of his money-bags wear out his
poor antagonist by costly delays and by going from court
to court. The poor man cannot fee first-class counsel, seek
out and bring up his witnesses from various parts of the
•country, and keep a stream of money continually running
through his solicitor's hands. There might be the same
law for him as for the rich man, if he could get it ;
but it is far away behind a golden gate, and he lacks the
key which alone will fit the wards of the lock. Yet surely
one of the primary duties of a State is to do justice among
its members, and to prevent the oppression of the weak
by the strong. In a civilised State justice should be dealt
out without fee or reward ; if a man gives up his inherent
right to defend himself and to judge in his own quarrel,
he ought not to be placed in a worse position than he would
be in if society did not exist. Lawyers, like judges,
should be officials paid by the State, and should have no

MODERN SOCIALISM. 47

pecuniary interest in winning the case in which they are
engaged.

The administration of justice in a Socialist State will be
a very much simpler matter than it is now. Most crimes
arise from the desire to become rich, from poverty, and
from ignorance. Under Socialism poverty and ignorance
will have disappeared, and the desire to grow rich will
have no raison d'etre when everyone has sufficient for com-
fort, is free from anxiety as to his future, and sees above
him no wealthy idlers whose luxury he desires to ape, and
whose idleness is held up to him as a matter of envy, as
the ideal state for man.

AMUSEMENT.

There is a curious inconsistency in the way in which
people deal with the question of amusement at the present
time. We should have an outcry about " pauperisation"
and " interference with private enterprise ", if anyone pro-
posed that the theatres should be open to the public without
charge. Yet Hyde Park is kept gorgeous with flowers,
Rotten Row is carefully attended to, a whole staff of
workers is employed, in order that the wealthy may have
a fashionable and pleasant lounge ; and all this is done at
the national expense, without any expression of fear lest
the wealthy should be pauperised by this expenditure on
their behalf. Nor is complaint made of the public money
spent on the other parks in London ; the most that is
suggested is that the money wanted ought to be taken
from the London rates and not from the national taxes.
No one proposes that the parks should be sold to the
highest bidder, and that private enterprise should be
encouraged by permitting some capitalist to buy them, and
to make a charge at the gate for admission. It is signi-
ficant that once anything gets under State control, the
advantages are found to be so great that no one would
dream of bringing it back under private exploitation. In
some parks a band plays, and people are actually de-
moralised by listening to music for which they do not pay
•directly. Nay more ; the British Museum, the National
Gallery, the South Kensington Museum, are all open free,
and no one's dignity is injured. But if the National
Gallery be open free, why not the Royal Academy? If
-a band may be listened to in the open air without pay-

48 MODEKK SOCIALISM.

ment, why not in a concert room ? And if a concert may
be free, why not a theatre ? Under the present system,
the Royal Academy, the concert, the theatre, are all private
speculations, and the public is exploited for the profit of
the speculators. The National Gallery and the Museums
are national property, and the nation enjoys the use of its
own possessions. In a nation which has gone so far in
the direction of providing intellectual amusement, it cannot
be pretended that any principle is involved in the question
whether or not it shall go further along the same road.
A nation which collects the works of dead painters can
hardly, on principle, refuse to show the works of living
ones; and we Socialists may fairly urge the success of
what has already been done in the way of catering for the
public amusement as a reason for doing more.

As it is, with the exception of a few places, the poor,
whose lives most need the light of amusement and of
beauty, are relegated to the very lowest and coarsest
forms of recreation. Unreal and intensely vulgar pictures
of life are offered them at the theatres which specially
cater for them ; they never have the delight of seeing
really graceful dancing, or noble acting, or of hearing
exquisite music. Verily, the amusements of the wealthier
leave much to be desired, and theatre and music-hall alike
pander to a low and vulgar taste instead of educating and
refining it ; but still these are better than their analogues
at the East End. Under Socialism, the theatre will be-
come a great teacher instead of a catch-penny spectacle ;
and dramatists and actors alike will work for the honor
of a noble art, instead of degrading their talents to catch
the applause of the most numerous class of an uneducated
people. Then an educated public will demand a higher
art, and artists will find it worth while to study when
patient endeavor meets with public recognition, and crude
impertinence suffers its due reproof. Theatres, concerts,
parks, all places of public resort, will be communal pro-
perty, open alike to all, and controlled by elected officers.

CONCLUSION.

It remains, in conclusion, to note the chief objections
raised to Socialism by its opponents. Of these the most
generally urged are three : that it will check individual

MODERN SOCIALISM. 49

initiative and energy ; that it will destroy individuality ;
that it will unduly restrict personal liberty.

That it will check individual initiative and energy. This
objection is founded on the idea that the impulse to initia-
tive must always be desire for personal money gain. But
this idea flies directly in the face of facts. Even under the
individualistic system, no great discovery has ever been
made and proclaimed merely from desire for personal
money profit. The genius that invents is moved by an
imperial necessity of its own nature, and wealth usually
falls to the lot of the commonplace man who exploits the
genius, and not to the genius itself. Even talent is moved
more by joy in its own exercise, and in the public approval
it wins, than by mere hope of money gain. Who would
not rather be an Isaac Newton, a Shelley, or a Shakspere,
than a mere Yanderbilt ? And most of all are those of
strong individual initiative moved by desire to serve their
"larger self", which is Man. The majority of such
choose the unpopular path, and by sheer strength and
service gradually win over the majority. We see men and
women who might have won wealth, position, power, by
using their talents for personal gain in pursuits deemed
honorable, cheerfully throw all aside to proclaim an un-
popular truth, and to serve a cause they believe to be
good and useful. And these motives will become far more
powerful under Socialism than they are now. For the
possession of money looms unduly large to-day in conse-
quence of the horrible results of the want of it. The
dread of hunger and of charity is the microscope which
magnifies the value of wealth. But once let all men be
secure of the necessaries and comforts of life, and all the
finer motives of action will take their proper place.
Energy will have its full scope under Socialism, and in-
deed when the value of a man's work is secured to him
instead of the half being appropriated by someone else, it
will receive a new impulse. How great will be the in-
centive to exertion when the discovery of some new force,
or new application of a known force, means greater com-
fort for the discoverer and for all ; none thrown out of
work by it, none injured by it, but so much solid gain
for each. And for the discoverer, as well as the material
gain common to him and his comrades, the thanks and
praise of the community in which he lives. And let not

50 MODERN SOCIALISM.

the power of public opinion be undervalued as a stimulus
to exertion. What Greek athlete would have sold his
wreath of bay for its weight in gold ? Only one kind of
energy will be annihilated by Socialism — the energy that
enslaves others for its own gain, and exploits its weaker
brethren for its own profit. For this kind of energy
there will be no room. The coarse purse-proud mediocrity,
who by sheer force of pushing brutality has trampled
his way to the front, will have vanished. The man who
grows rich by underpaying his employees, by being a
"hard business man", will have passed away. Energy
will have to find for itself paths of service instead of
paths of oppression, and will be honored or reprobated
according to the way in which it is used.

That it will destroy individuality. If this were true, the
loss to progress would indeed be incalculable. But So-
cialism, instead of destroying individuality will cultivate
and accentuate it, and indeed will make it possible for
the first time in civilisation for the vast majority. For
it needs, in order that individuality shall be developed,
that the individual shall have his characteristics drawn out
and trained by education ; it needs that he shall work,
in maturity, at the work for which his natural abilities fit
him ; it needs that he shall not be exhausted by excessive
toil, but shall go fresh and vigorous to his labor ; it
needs that he shall have leisure to continuously improve
himself, to train his intellect and his taste. But such
education, such choice of work, such short hours of labor,
such leisure for self-culture, where are all these to-day for
our laboring population ? A tremendous individuality,
joined to robust health, may make its way upward out
of the ranks of the handworkers to-day; but all normal
individuality is crushed out between the grinding-stones
of the industrial mill. See the faces of the lads and
lasses as they troop out of the factory, out of the great
mercantile establishments ; how alike they all are ! They
might almost have been turned out by the dozen. We
Socialists demand that individuality shall be possible for
all, and not only for the few who are too strong to crush.

That it will unduly restrict personal liberty. Socialism,
as conceived by the non-student of it, is an iron system,
iu which the " State " — which is apparently separate from
the citizens — shall rigidly assign to each his task, and

MODERN SOCIALISM. • > 1

deal out to each his subsistence. Even if this caricature
were accurate, Socialism would give the great majority
far more freedom than they enjoy to-day ; for they would
only be under the yoke for their brief hours of toil, and
would have unfettered freedom for the greater portion of
their time. Contrast this compulsion with the compulsion
exercised on the workers to-day by the sweater, the
manager of the works or business, and above all the
compulsion of hunger, that makes them bend to the yoke
for the long hours of the working day, and often far into
the night : and then say whether the " freedom " of Indus-
trialism is not a heavier chain than the "tyranny " of the
most bureaucratic Socialism imagined by our opponents.
But the "tyranny of Socialism", however, would consist
only in ordering — and enforcing the order if necessary —
that every healthy adult should labor for his own subsist-
ence. That is, it would protect the liberty of each by not
allowing anyone to compel another person to work for him,
and by opening to all equal opportunities of working for
themselves. The worker would choose his own work
certainly as freely as he does now : at the present time, if
one class of work has enough operatives employed at it,
a man must take some other, and I do not see that
Socialism could prevent this limitation of choice. At any
rate, the limitation is not an argument against Socialism,
since it exists at the present time.

Imagine the glorious freedom which would be the lot of
each when, the task of social work complete, and done
under healthy and pleasant conditions, the worker turned
to science, literature, art, gymnastics, to what he would,
for the joyous hours of leisure. For him all the treasures
of knowledge and of beauty ; for him all the delights of
scenery and of art ; for him all that only the wealthy
enjoy to-day ; all that comes from work flowing back to
enrich the worker's life.

I know that our hope is said to be the dream of the
enthusiast; I know that our message is derided, and that
the gospel of man's redemption which we preach is scorned.
Be it so. Our work shall answer the gibes of our oppo-
nents, and our faith in the future shall outlast their
mockery. We know that however much man's ignorance
may hinder our advance ; however much his selfishness
may block our path ; that we shall yet win our way to the

52 MODERN SOCIALISM.

land we have seen but in our visions, and rear the temple
of human happiness on the solid foundation stones of
science and of truth. Above all sneer and taunt, above all
laughter and bitter cries of hatred, rings out steadily our
prophecy of the coming time :

" O nations undivided,
O single People, and free,
We dreamers, we derided,
We mad blind men that see,
We bear you witness ere ye come that ye shall be."

* 01 i g * 0| r g i

2£ ,— M 1-5 % ~J\ 15 %

%a3A!

^lOS-A

. r linn i nv x»

.r linn »r»v»\

C SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACIUTY

000 097 782 7

University of California

SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY

405 Hilgard Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90024-1388

Return this material to the library

from which it was borrowed.

1,1996

-UR